Live export six months on

All Australian jurisdictions have freedom of information provisions, allowing access to certain government document and information. What the live export debate has shown is that people want information. As host Kerry O’Brien opined on 30 May 2011 “this is a story that demands to be seen and heard.”

We should have the right to know how animals are treated: not in general but as individuals.  The presumption should be that it is not a private matter but a public one. Freedom of Information can be used to find reports received by the government about the live export trade. But there is no means to know what is actually happening behind the walls and on the boats.

In the U.K. there has been much debate, and some consensus, towards the installation and independent monitoring of abattoirs with cctv. Not surprisingly, this followed the publication of covertly filmed footage of blatant cruelty at a number of abattoirs. Just as we have a right to know what the government does with our taxes, we should be entitled to know, and to see, what is being done to animals for profit. Those who profit from the exploitation of animals have an interest in keeping the treatment afforded to the animals secret.

Over a decade ago, in a case that came to define some of the boundaries in privacy laws, a Tasmanian abattoir, Lenah Game Meats took the ABC to the High Court in a bid to prevent them from screening evidence of cruelty. The ABC prevailed and the footage was shown. More recently in the U.S., following lobbying from large agricultural companies, a number of state legislatures have considered laws to make filming of factory farms a criminal offence in itself.

Six months on and much of the public sentiment arising from ‘A Bloody Business’ has dissipated. With the vision no longer fresh, the mass of public interest has moved on, and with it the political will to change the status quo. This could be seen when the Labor caucus amended a motion requiring stunning to making it preferable.

Within three months of the trade resuming, over 100,000 cows had been sent to Indonesia. Each and every one them has senses and perceptions. They have their own experiences: some better, some worse than those that were so briefly put before the Australian people six months ago.